Yeah... I contemplated on purchasing the game since it is, indeed, a lot of fun.. But there's no way with the current lag issues etc. that the game will have a steady population at a $20.00 price point. Not worth investing in if there's no one to play with and against.

Well if it was 10$, people would be more accepting most likely... even then for 20$ I would personally get it. It definitely has value even in it's current form. Granted I have concerns with it getting to "release" after a rename, steam release, and obvious key issues that shouldn't be there.

The lag definitely makes it hard for many people to decide, even if it is "in alpha" most know the game was Das Tal before that for a decent amount of time. So it's hard to excuse the lag, but at the same time that's why it's "alpha".

The lack of information provided is another huge issue, to a point where it's odd... especially when some information was provided previously in earlier patches.

Tooltips do not provide critical information such as cost, cooldown, duration of effects, radius if it is an AoE, and of course information if it scales in those areas from leveling it.

Furthermore on tooltip information, you must "apply" points to skills before seeing their effect, rather than like how most games will at least give you a preview prior.

Armor differences are kinda tilted...

Robe has damage, displacement, escapes, stealth, CC immunity, and other such bonuses. This isn't even considering it also has reactive defensive skills, a healing aura, and even a solid pbAoE energy drain into heal. Not to mention with delayed teleport/earthquake you gain easy bomb potential before even considering weapon choices.

Leather has mobility, stealth (self and group), many reactive skills which can gap close, CC clear (root/slow), raw movement speed increase and energy recovery, and traps which definitely have quite a bit of effectiveness.

Splint Mail has only one gap closer, one displacement, and after that it's many niche abilities you must question.

Aggressive Leap has just enough range to be useful, scales by 2 damage per level (so far from 1-10 but not shown as a possible upgrade, and for being this lines only gap closer and damaging ability in splint mail it's rather sad.

Barge and Ignore Pain are easily their "best" abilities without other instances being required to make them either OP or are simply a strange oversight. I shouldn't need to explain why these two abilities can be impressive solo or in a group, especially when being focused or simply a displacement in a proper way.

Sacrifice Self : Impressive for group play, even with it's extremely poor range.

Juggeranught : A niche skill until it's leveled enough to remove the slow, even so the fact it gives 400-800 health puts it as a solid solo skill for Splint Mail especially when outnumbered.

Silencing Field's best use is simply building up your team's CC immunity prior to a fight. As otherwise it will drain far too much energy to be effective in a active team fight.

Dampening Field is nice for it's CDR reduction and the fact it ignore determination, but again it drains a large sum of energy in combat. If it cost scaled down as well with level (doesn't even need to be much to be impressive)

Meditation is solid for a fight reset if your enemy isn't able to stay on you constantly or runs off while you content a point. It's biggest "OP" factor is that the debuff can be removed by spear/shield from an ally. Once that happens this ability gets fairly "OP", but due to the nature of it requiring a second person it doesn't feel as crazy strong.

I am unsure if it should be allowed to be broken out of (for enemies trying to kill/CC someone using it) as it does provide some interesting mechanics for a skill on a 60s cooldown. If it ever scales lower other than from the cooldown stat (meaning it should never decrease the cooldown per level, maybe damage recieved but not cooldown), it definitely would need to be allowed to be interrupted somehow.

Rock Form : Could use a tooltip to cover it's menetal debuff strength, including if it stays the same or scales up/down with ranks.

Meat Shield looks like it could be impressive, but currently at rank 1 it hardly lasts a second making one doubt if they should level it as no duration is present in the tooltip to know if it's simply a reactive skill or actually improves in duration per level.

For a "tank" armor set, it has no CC clear nor gap closers which seems strange. Not to mention the fields (2x) feel like rather wasted skill slots before even considering rock/sponge form feel like wasted slots before group play or in situations where no menetal damage is present. And with the strength of staff's burst chances are you will regret rock form, let alone earthquake bombing.

Armor and Weapons shouldn't feel as tilted in terms of overall effectiveness, weapon wise we at least see a healthy balance of weapons used while armor robe/leather is easily more dominate simply from the reasons above. Which I could go into weapons but I already covered totem in the balance recap thread at least for totem. But also in that regard all armor/weapons should feel "powerful" in their own way and not redundant/pointless (3 DoT's on Totem which overwrite one another based on strength... wat? lol) or silly (Gravity Well being a troll defense against melee if using meditation as it dispels the health/energy DoT along with slow without reapplying until exiting and returning into the AoE effect) for that matter.

Point is... there's plenty of information that needs to be provided that newer players will be confused over. Even simply checking the map's info tab for resources/pgiments/etc is constantly pointed out in help.

Another good example is "stars" which can hurt your experience in lower zones due to their extreme debuff (damage/healing/damage recieved/etc). At 16 with all skill points spent in +0 armor/weapon is fairly extreme. Which you would think unlocking all your skills, spending their points, and wearing +0 to +3 armor/weapons wouldn't disallow you from starting zones as they are provided as "beginner" tiers.

So to recap...

Information in all forms should be easier to locate and understand. Especially when making choices on skills.

Armors should "all" feel useful for solo AND group.

Weapons should shine in their areas effectively rather than some clearly having superiority in almost all aspects.

Skills that make no sense (bow swing being single target... wat?) or skills that are easily considered useless or poor due to scaling/base damage/etc compared to other skills need tweaks.

Nysek wrote:Another good example is "stars" which can hurt your experience in lower zones due to their extreme debuff (damage/healing/damage recieved/etc). At 16 with all skill points spent in +0 armor/weapon is fairly extreme. Which you would think unlocking all your skills, spending their points, and wearing +0 to +3 armor/weapons wouldn't disallow you from starting zones as they are provided as "beginner" tiers.

This is how the star algorithm works:

Weacko wrote:Here is how the "star ranking" algorithm works: You gain points for four things: - gear- skill points in your skill bar- playtime (per account)- a good kill/death ratioBased on this we rank all players who were active in the last 24 hours from highest to lowest. The upper players get the stars. Of course during your first hours playing the game, you get the newbie tag.

Luci wrote:Not worth investing in if there's no one to play with and against.

Kekke wrote:I think you HAVE to keep it F2P, at least during alpha/beta..

Kind of a vicious circle with indie developers who lack funds. You need money to create and keep the game running, but people want to purchase the game only after it's fully fledged out and works flawless. Just that if nobody buys the game right now, you might never see it getting fully fledged out.It's a shame game developers have to eat and pay rent as well :p

Luci wrote:Not worth investing in if there's no one to play with and against.

Kekke wrote:I think you HAVE to keep it F2P, at least during alpha/beta..

Kind of a vicious circle with indie developers who lack funds. You need money to create and keep the game running, but people want to purchase the game only after it's fully fledged out and works flawless. Just that if nobody buys the game right now, you might never see it getting fully fledged out.It's a shame game developers have to eat and pay rent as well :p

I agree and wish all people would pay for it, but that is not the fact today and I don't think anything is gonna change that atm.

Which means your post is pretty useless, there will be a few who will purchase it, but the majority not. Telling them they are cheap is not the way to go.I really hope they figure something out because I really enjoyed this game for the few days it lasted.

Nysek wrote:Another good example is "stars" which can hurt your experience in lower zones due to their extreme debuff (damage/healing/damage recieved/etc). At 16 with all skill points spent in +0 armor/weapon is fairly extreme. Which you would think unlocking all your skills, spending their points, and wearing +0 to +3 armor/weapons wouldn't disallow you from starting zones as they are provided as "beginner" tiers.

This is how the star algorithm works:

Weacko wrote:Here is how the "star ranking" algorithm works: You gain points for four things: - gear- skill points in your skill bar- playtime (per account)- a good kill/death ratioBased on this we rank all players who were active in the last 24 hours from highest to lowest. The upper players get the stars. Of course during your first hours playing the game, you get the newbie tag.

Luci wrote:Not worth investing in if there's no one to play with and against.

Kekke wrote:I think you HAVE to keep it F2P, at least during alpha/beta..

Kind of a vicious circle with indie developers who lack funds. You need money to create and keep the game running, but people want to purchase the game only after it's fully fledged out and works flawless. Just that if nobody buys the game right now, you might never see it getting fully fledged out.It's a shame game developers have to eat and pay rent as well :p

If the lag can be resolved, that alone would convince people to buy it. I am at least 90% sure I will be buying it, my comment on the pricing of course was simply because when recommending it to friends...

"Ya it's pretty fun in PVP" - Pretty much all of them have a blast in PVP. PVE is stale but it has a goal in mind."But the lag is cancer..." - Which obviously includes warp, snap, getting suck in objects, and of course desync.

I can see the potential, but I also understand why someone might not consider 20$.

Low population.

Lag related issues.

Lack of information even on a basic level even for being indie.

Other games costing less and having more to them at this time. (Hell BDO is 10$... a MMO that feels single player as the focus is what "you" earn, not how you interact with the world, besides maybe clan wages.)

Kekke wrote:Which means your post is pretty useless, there will be a few who will purchase it, but the majority not. Telling them they are cheap is not the way to go.

a) I never called anybody cheap.b) If my post is useless, so is telling others to work for free. I wish everybody could do what they want and there would be no financial pressure on any of us. But that is not the fact today and I don't think anything is gonna change atm.

According to steam charts: The game is peaking at about 50 concurrent players a day (across all servers total)...

With the nature of this type of game, if there isn't a decent population to play with then its hard to justify paying $20 unless you genuinely just want to support the devs.

Getting "access" to play the game is barely even a selling point when there's no one else playing anyway.

IMO if the $20 price point isn't going to change anytime soon, then the game shouldn't have gone into Early Access until it was developed/polished enough to sustain a reasonable player population willing to pay that amount.